Monday 28 October 2013

OUGD504 - Design Production: Design For Web Studio Session 1

At the start of today's session we were asked to identify 5 different pages to include in our own website. Bearing in mind that my website is going to be about sugar cane, I decided to try and think of a variety of different possibilities.



Having completed this we then had a discussion with Lorraine. She asked us all what we would include on our websites in terms of categories. We came up with the following:

  • Home page 
- Indicative of content
- Intro
- Aesthetically pleasing

  • Contact
- Enquiry page/form
- Social media links
- Tel no/address/email

  • Information/About
- Ethical statement
- Facts

  • Gallery/Portfolio
- No need for subheadings

  • Forums, posts, user posts
  • It is important when designing a website to use the right language for each of the pages
  • Don't need loads of sub categories
  • People are lazy when using the internet
  • Put contact info on homepage? For mobile users - Consider who will be using it
  • Dictate how to use the website
  • Landing page - Wastes time/data unless there is a valuable reason
  • Test the design by giving the website to someone else to test who isn't as good with technology
Having had this discussion we were then asked to consider what we thought our homepage would look like. I came up with the following designs. All of which were my very initial design ideas and so need a lot of improvements made to them.




We then had to go round the rest of the class and leave comments on other people's designs. I didn't find this very beneficial at all because we hadn't really had much time to write down our concepts so that everyone else would be able to understand our ideas. As a result the feedback that I got wasn't really very constructive and helpful. 

I received the following comments:
  • 'I don't really know what it is about. Name? Logo? Intro? What is the purpose?'
  • 'What is the actual subject? Not very clear at first sight What is the websites purpose?'
  • 'A title or logo is needed to indicate what this site is about. The more imagery the better! My favourite concept is the globe as it looks friendlier.'
  • 'Strong concept and clear reasoning behind design decisions eg. light and dark. Not sure what the purpose of the website is? Is it to educate people? Who would it be aimed at? People who produce packaging etc?'
  • 'Unsure on the purpose and audience. Simplistic and structure on design. Ethical? If so how people can contribute to help this.'
  • 'A title on homepage may make more clear. If going to be all images will the user understand how to navigate? Drawing is neat and clear, communicated your ideas well.'
  • 'Think it needs a fixed, thin bar at the top of page with logo and navigation bar as it's very hard to know what is it. This wouldn't detract from being image based, and interactive. Also, could have titles on each slide.'
Below is a piece of work I produced over the Summer holidays for a social media agency I was working with for a couple of weeks. I was really pleased with the outcome. This was inspired by the British Gas advert initially, and they were really happy with the final design. When I was initially drawing out my designs above, this came to mind instantly as inspiration. I hope that I will be able to build on the idea using this as inspiration and continue to improve it through developmental work.



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